During the strategic modernization program that the Soviet Union undertook in the 1970s, it deployed a large number of multiple-warhead ballistic missiles. This deployment raised concerns in the United States about vulnerability of its land-based missile force and was one of the factors that contributed to the military buildup that the United States undertook in the late 1970s-early 1980s. The newly available documents that contain evidence of the Soviet missile programs demonstrate that the "window of vulnerability" did not exist and provide some insight into the Soviet modernization program.

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years.

Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, and nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

Carol Atkinson (speaker) retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 2005. While in the military she served in a wide variety of management and operational positions in the fields of intelligence, targeting, and combat assessment. During the Cold War she flew on the Strategic Air Command's nuclear airborne command post as a target analyst. During Operation Desert Storm (1991) she worked on the intelligence staff in Riyadh, and, subsequently, on the contingency planning staff in Dhahran/Khobar, Saudi Arabia. While in the military, she taught at the Air Force Academy and the Air Force's Command and Staff College.

Atkinson holds a PhD in international relations from Duke University, an MA in geography from Indiana University, and a BS from the United States Air Force Academy (5th class with women). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Atkinson's primary research focuses on U.S. military-to-military contacts as channels of international norm diffusion. She is also working on a project examining the influence of educational exchange programs on democratization and a project on the social construction of the biological warfare threat in the United States.

Jessica Weeks (respondent) is a doctoral candidate in the Stanford Department of Political Science. Her research interests include foreign policy decision-making in non-democratic regimes, the settlement of military crises, and the effects of foreign military interventions on target states. She will be a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC during 2007-2008. Jessica received her BA in political science from The Ohio State University, and an MA in international history and politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Charles Perrow (speaker) is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and a visiting scholar at CISAC. An organizational theorist, his latest research is presented in The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters (Princeton, spring 2007). Among his award-winning research is Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2002), winner of the Max Weber award for best book on organizations from the American Sociological Association in 2003. His recent articles include "Organizational or Executive Failures?" and "Inside the Nuclear Plant's Executive Office," both published in Contemporary Sociology. Perrow currently serves on a National Academy of Science panel on the possibilities of certifying software. He received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, all in sociology.

Peter G. Neumann (respondent) has been in SRI's Computer Science Lab since September 1971. He is concerned with computer systems and networks, trustworthiness/dependability, high assurance, security, reliability, survivability, safety, and many risks-related issues such as voting-system integrity, crypto policy, social implications, and human needs including privacy. He moderates the Association for Computing Machinery's Risks Forum, edits Communications of the ACM's monthly Inside Risks column, chairs the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, and chairs the National Committee for Voting Integrity. He is a Fellow of the ACM, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is also an SRI Fellow. He received the National Computer System Security Award in 2002 and the ACM SIGSAC (Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control) Outstanding Contributions Award in 2005. He is a member of the U.S. Government Accountability Office Executive Council on Information Management and Technology, and the California Office of Privacy Protection advisory council. He has doctorates from Harvard and Darmstadt.

After the DPRK's nuclear test on October 9, 2006, denuclearization of the DPRK became an urgent issue that must be achieved as soon as possible to restrain an arms race in Northeast Asia. For denuclearization of the DPRK, issues of verification of dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are the most critical elements if an agreement can be reached between the U.S. and the DPRK. Objectives of the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are disposition of currently existing nuclear material, nuclear weapons, relevant facilities, nuclear workers and documents, and discontinuation of future clandestine production of those things, i.e., terminating the nuclear production capability of the DPRK. Kang will speak about technical aspects of the DPRK nuclear weapons program, including an idea on the disablement of 5 MWe graphite reactors at Yongbyon and major issues in the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs.

Jungmin Kang is a science fellow at CISAC. Kang brings to the study of nuclear policy issues considerable expertise in technical analyses of nuclear energy issues, based on his studies in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Kang has co-authored articles on the proliferation-resistance of advanced fuel cycles, spent-fuel storage, plutonium disposition, and South Korea's undeclared uranium enrichment and plutonium experiments. He has contributed many popular articles to South Korea's newspapers and magazines and is frequently interviewed about spent-fuel issues and the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear-weapon program. Kang's recent research focuses on technical analysis of issues related to nuclear weapons and energy of North Korea as well as spent-fuel issues in Northeast Asia. Kang serves on South Korea's Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development where he advises on nuclear energy policy and spent fuel management.

Kang received a PhD in nuclear engineering from Tokyo University, Japan, and MS and BS degrees in nuclear engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea. Kang worked in Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security for two years in 1998-2000.

Within the last 10 years several non-proliferation programs have been realized in Uzbekistan. Those programs include actions on upgrading physical protection systems of facilities possessing nuclear reactors and powerful radioactive sources, measures on improving nuclear security and radioactive safety, equipping the country's exit/entry points in order to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials, improving safeguards and radioactive monitoring of environment. Special attention was given to conversion of research reactors to low enrichment uranium and treatment of highly enriched fresh and spent reactor fuel. The programs have been performed in cooperation with U.S. energy and defense departments, the International Atomic Energy Agency and related institutions.

Bekhzod Yuldashev is a CISAC science fellow. He served as a consultant-advisor at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2006-2007. Prior to that, he was director-general of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Uzbekistan Academy of Science from 1990 to 2006. From 1984 to 1990, he served as head of the laboratory in the Physical Technical Institute in Tashkent, where he had been a senior researcher since 1972.

Yuldashev has published about 300 scientific papers dedicated to various subjects of particle and nuclear physics in the wide range of primary energies. In particular, he experimentally obtained the first evidence of dibaryon resonances, discovered the effect of emitting energetic nucleons from local subsystems in nuclei, observed anomalously high production of eta-mesons and cumulative delta-isobars on nuclei and has experimentally proven that production and decay of vector and tensor resonances are the origins of so-called leading pions with an opposite sign to the primary one in high energy interactions. He has more than 20 patents on nuclear applications.

He is a full member of the Academy of Science of Uzbekistan and served as the academy's president from September 2000 through November 2005. In 2000-2004 he was elected a Member of Parliament of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and in 2004-2005 was elected a Senator.

He is a fellow of Islamic Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Physical Society. From 1992 to 2002, he was an elected member of the Scientific Council of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia, one of two international nuclear centers in the world. He is also a member of the IAEA's Standing Advisory Group for Nuclear Applications, a fellow of the Islamic Countries Academy, and foreign member of the National Academy of Kazakhstan. He is an honorary professor of Samarkand State University and honorary doctor of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (2004). He won the 2004 Economic Cooperation Organization's excellence award in science and technology and the 1983 Uzbekistan State Prize for Science and Technology.

Yuldashev graduated from Tashkent and Moscow Universities in 1968. He earned his PhD in physics and mathematics from the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, in 1971.

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe (speaker) is a visiting scholar at CISAC. Her PhD dissertation, entitled "Humanitarian Military Intervention: the Moral Imperative Versus the Rule of Law," focused on conflicting ethical and legal justifications for humanitarian military intervention. In an earlier publication, The Promise of Law for the Post-Mao Leadership in China, she examined the prospects for the development of the rule of law in China. Future projects will address the rule of law with respect to norms on use of force.

Donahoe earned her PhD in ethics and social theory from the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California Berkeley. She holds a JD from Stanford law school and an MA in East Asian studies from Stanford. She also earned an MA in theological studies from Harvard and spent a year studying Mandarin at Nankai University in Tianjin. After law school, Donahoe clerked for the Hon. William H. Orrick of the United States Federal District Court for the Northern District of California. She served as a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School and practiced high-tech litigation at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, CA. She is a member of the California Bar.

Laura Donohue (respondent) is a fellow at CISAC and at Stanford Law School's Center for Constitutional Law. Donohue's research focuses on national security and counterterrorist law in the United States, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Israel, and the Republic of Turkey. Prior to Stanford, Donohue was a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she served on the Executive Session for Domestic Preparedness and the International Security Program. In 2001 the Carnegie Corporation named her to its Scholars Program, funding the project, "Security and Freedom in the Face of Terrorism." At Stanford, Donohue directed a project for the United States Departments of Justice and State and, later, Homeland Security, on mass-casualty terrorist incidents. She has written numerous articles on counterterrorism in liberal, democratic states. Author of Counter-terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom 1922-2000, she is completing a manuscript for Cambridge University Press analyzing the impact of British and American counterterrorist law on life, liberty, property, privacy, and free speech. Donohue obtained her AB (with honors, in philosophy) from Dartmouth College, her MA (with distinction, in war and peace studies) from University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and her PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. She received her JD from Stanford Law School.

David Patel (speaker) is a 2006-2007 predoctoral fellow at CDDRL (fall quarter) and postdoctoral fellow at CISAC (winter and spring quarters). His dissertation examines questions of religious organization and collective action in the Middle East, with a theoretical focus on the relationship of organization and information in particular. Empirically, his study looks at Islamic institutions and their role in political action in a wide range of settings including 7th century garrison cities of the early Islamic empire, through the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Patel has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East over the last several years, including extended visits to Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, and Iraq, where he spent seven months in Basra conducting research beginning in the fall of 2003. He works with David Laitin, Jim Fearon, and Avner Greif at Stanford.

Patel received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in March 2007. In fall 2007 he will join the faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor of political science.

Walter W. Powell (respondent) is a professor of education and affiliated professor of organizational behavior, sociology, and communications at Stanford University. He is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. At Stanford, he is director of the Scandinavian Consortium on Organizational Research. Powell works in the areas of organization theory and economic sociology. He is coauthor of Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing (1983), an analysis of the transformation of book publishing from a family-run, craft-based field into a multinational media industry, and author of Getting Into Print (1985), an ethnographic study of decision-making processes in scholarly publishing houses. He edited The Nonprofit Sector (1987, referred to by reviewers as "the Bible of scholarship on the nonprofit sector"). Powell is currently directing a large scale study, Stanford Project on the Evolution of the Nonprofit Sector, of the circulation of managerial practices in the Bay Area nonprofit community, mapping the flow of ideas among consultants, philanthropists, founders, business leaders, government officials, and nonprofit managers. Powell is widely known for his contributions to institutional analysis, beginning with his article, with Paul DiMaggio, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields" (1983) and their subsequent edited book, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (1991). At Stanford, he is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business, a member of the Public Policy faculty, and serves on the governing board of the France-Stanford program.